Stable Tours

Jena Antonucci isn’t afraid to take on what she calls “project horses.” She readily admits that many of the 30-plus horses split between Barn 73 at the Oklahoma Training Track and at Florida’s Gulfstream Park.

Trainer David Donk would never call himself a technology guy and reluctantly accepted an iPad as a gift from his wife Faye a few years ago. He owned a laptop and an iPhone, what did he need with another gadget?

Now, it’s a big part of his job and a fairly constant way to access the facts about his growing stable of horses.

Phil Serpe’s 18 horses at Saratoga are sound and ready to run. Him? Not so much. And he’s got the boot on his right leg to show for it.

The short answer is he strained his achilles tendon sheath, which sounds like something a horse would do, while working out this winter in Florida. The long answer involves tripping over a crossbar in the door of his barn at Belmont Park, falling to the asphalt and fracturing both elbows.

Jimmy Toner added his name to the list of winners through the first 10 days of the meeting when Thieves Guild posted a mild upset in Sunday’s Caress Stakes. He won again Saturday as Recepta took the De La Rose Stakes on the Whitney undercard.

Jimmy Jerkens walks down his low-roofed shedrow on the Oklahoma side and gives a history lesson on his barn.

“My father was in this barn in 1955,” Jerkens said. “He would always pull up and say, ‘Yeah, Admiral Vee was in this stall, I had these stalls…’ Laz Barrera was in this barn when he had Affirmed.”

The location of Ian Wilkes’ barn at the far end of Clare Court might be one of the best on the grounds. The barn sits in a quiet spot on the corner, with Nelson Avenue to the west and the Greentree property to the south.

Gary Contessa’s first summer in Saratoga happened in 1978 with a 12-hours-a-day job as a groom/pony boy/exercise boy/hotwalker/foreman for Jimmy Picou. The barn did not have running hot water, instead relying on a 55-gallon drum propped up on cinder blocks over a flame fueled by a propane tank.

Ralph Nicks is back. The Saratoga veteran – as assistant for Bill Mott and on his own – decided to stay in Florida last summer. The decision, made out of necessity, turned into the best decision Nicks has made, perhaps, in his career.

Rick Violette called his Saratoga barn near the 6-furlong gap on the main track “as close to a home as you could have.” He’s been there for, as he put it, 50 years. It’s probably not quite that long, but he did work there for David Whiteley and Angel Penna before becoming a trainer.